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@laxla The first two chapters of Genesis are currently available publicly on the Kofi, chapters 3-4 come out next week. Subscribers have access to the epub as far as I have translated, to Genesis 7.

You can also join in the discussion as a subscriber and I'm happy to prioritize different passages out of order by request.

@ned ok what it actually feels like a translation instead of derivative work

Why heavens instead of sky though, it says sky

"began" is an elegant solution (literally means, "in the beginnings", or כשהתחיל/ו/ה, "when they started"), though technically somewhat grammatically inaccurate

@laxla Began was a compromise, I would have preferred "once upon a time," but I'm aiming for a formal equivalence. It's "heavens" because "ha'shamayim" (excuse me, I'd have to copy/paste hebrew) is dual and I'm trying to keep as close as I can to the original words. Same as "waters," which are dual in Hebrew.

@ned
"Once upon a time" itself is kinda a terrible translation imo, it's the first word, and it says "in the beginning" as in T=0, not "sometime in the middle of time", so I do understand why you chose Began. It has the same implications though in a slightly different way.

Wait, what? "sky" isn't dual. It's שמיים as in שם מים, "the water over there". And מים is, at least in modern Hebrew, not sure about biblical Hebrew, is an always-plural, not a dual (and even if it is a dual, point stands). God created a single form of water, as they only split it into two (the water over there and the water over here) after the fact. See: להבות, as in, blades of fire. It's an always-plural of fire. Though in this case it's also a regular plural of a singular blade of fire.

@laxla I think the worst translation is "in the beginning" not only because it closes off possible interpretations which *could* be right readings of the text, but moreso because that isn't what the text literally says. And I'm mostly aiming for the most literal translation I can.

@ned but, it does? בראשית literally means "in the beginning" or "firstly". It doesn't mean "at the beginning", no, but it does mean some instant inside the duration that is the beginning. The beginning of what, isn't specified, but it is literal.

It's just extremely clunky

@ned saying "god began" is technically inaccurate, but it's ok, it delivers the same implications --- "God began with doing xyz" would be the most accurate, but that's an artistic choice at that point

@laxla It is, but I wanted to start the chapter with Began because it preserves certain kabbalistic interpretations which would be lost without that particular wording.

Sorry, I was looking at other occurrences of heavens/skies. It would be an easy thing to replace later since I could run a find/replace operation to fix it if I favored the other wording. Sometimes that's why I chose such odd wording, as a placeholder.

@ned no yeah I agree with using Began there

@laxla I spent a month researching that first word and months on the first verse, just because of all the various interpretations that exist because of the nominal phrasing. I had notes on Mishna, Talmud, and Kabbalah, as well as various Christian interpretations, but that was several moves ago. No idea where they ended up.

@ned oh damn ouch. That sucks. it's just that I don't see if you're trying to make a literal translation or an accepts-but-does-embrace translation. Both should exist, but these are completely contradictory goals, as naturally, some interpretations are flat out truer to the text due to not relying on translations.

@ned (i.e. you'll have to decide if you wanna use heavens, as to not harm christians' feelings*, or if you wanna be literal and annoy some people, and use skys)

(It's just that your explanations have the same vibe as software development's "I don't know what my goal is", where you're trying to make something extensible, and performant, and quick --- in this case, literal, accepting, and quick. In software dev you can pick two, here, only one)

*I put it that way intentionally, but beyond my joking, it actually is a proper goal, and I'm sure you'll encounter some translation where the literal option would upset Jews

@ned

(imma intentionally continue to say Skys like Tolkien used Dwarves)

Imo it isn't that clunky in Hebrew at least, god/s of the sky.

But I think "prayed to the god of the sky" would be pretty fitting? After all, the existence of a single god as to itself is an interpretation of the bible. It could also be read as a rogue god leading a personality cult (which is my favorite way of unseriously referring to religion), so what if in this case, the prayer was to another god? The god of the sky?

I see your reasoning though. Don't like it, but I see it.

@ned (bonus point, just realized, "skys" can be used to imply that it is a different meaning to "skies", so it's ambiguous as well, but more similarly to how it is ambiguous in Hebrew)

@ned psalms? (Googling sounds)

Ok then I'll think I'll postpone continuing this Convo until you're done with כתובים

@ned good convo tho, basically a

There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.